


Sleep for Now

by RiverK



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Bilingual Bonus, College era, Elektra's memories, F/M, Hiligaynon, Songfic, Southeast Asian character, Sugarcane, traditional music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:34:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24548479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiverK/pseuds/RiverK
Summary: Matt is too comfortable. He makes Elektra remember.Who was Elektra before she became Elektra?
Relationships: Matt Murdock/Elektra Natchios
Comments: 10
Kudos: 10





	Sleep for Now

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta read. Typed in a mad fit of Corona/Protest/Antiauthoritarian-stress. Concrit welcome: we don't grow unless we learn.

_Ili ili  
Tulog anay.  
Wala diri  
Imo nanay  
Kadto tienda  
Bakal papay  
Ili ili  
Tulog anay_

Elektra remembers, vaguely.

The voice singing the song is high and breathy, barely grown. A warm hand rubs steady circles across her back.

The mat she curls up on smells sweaty and pandanus-sweet.

Outside a window lined with coconut fronds and bamboo, the cicadas creak against a sky crowded with stars. A constellation someone calls the Three Sisters winks down at her across a riot of dark gray.

Orion’s belt, her mind supplies now. It isn’t visible from this latitude.

The window is closed against the late autumn cold.

Matthew snores softly underneath her Egyptian cotton comforter. His arm emerges from its depths and stretches, heavy, over her stomach. He curls his fingers over the edge of her waist and tugs her close.

The lullaby --and it _is_ a lullaby, she isn’t sure how she’s sure- ebbs and flows along the corners of her mind as she obliges, nudging closer until her shoulder slips underneath the covers and his forehead presses against the flesh of her arm.

The song was from before. Before the Chaste found her and said she had to learn.

She remembers fields and fields of sugarcane towering overhead. The smell of mangoes in the dry season. The machete - _binangon_ , that’s what it’s called, and the certainty of that knowledge is almost frightening- in its sweat-stained wooden sheath by an open door.

She remembers being carried on a woman’s hip, her damp black hair smelling sweetly of soap-bark. Chickens muttering and scratching for fallen tamarind pods underfoot. The acrid black of smoke curling over burning cane-fields.

They came before the planting could begin. She had looked forward to finally being big enough to help, but they took her away.

It had all been so very bright. So far away.

But Matthew’s breathing is soft against her bicep. And she remembers curling against someone else --elder sister? Cousin? - and exhaling damply into their skin as they hummed.

The memories are too close to the surface. She remembers her training. She shouldn’t feel this safe. She pinches her thigh hard enough to bruise in self-reproach. She tenses at the pain, and Matthew’s breathing shifts for five seconds before she forces herself to relax.

She knows she has him. So far, it has gone exactly the way Stick had predicted.

Except no one from the Chaste had anticipated this. The softness radiating from her belly. The memories rising bright and fragrant underneath her chest. Matthew’s fingers threading through hers like sunlight threading through leaves.

It isn’t safe.

Her contacts have sent her his father’s killer’s address.

Tomorrow, she’ll see if he does what needs to be done.

For now, she closes her eyes.

_Ili ili  
Tulog anay._

**Author's Note:**

> Song here: https://soundcloud.com/johanna-gayle-de-asis/ili-ili-tulog-anay-acapella


End file.
